Purity Politics and Trashing Women

The brand new A Room of Our Own website is up! And, it’s only taken 14 hours for the trashing to start on Facebook. I was actually surprised; normally it only takes about 2 hours before the “OMG you’ve let trannies in” brigade to start. The “OMG you’ve let TERFS and SWERFS in” hasn’t started, but I haven’t checked my twitter feed this morning. I prefer to leave twitter until after I’ve had caffeine. Plus, I’ve got most of them blocked on twitter – my Facebook wall is open so anyone can post on it, which has its own positives and negatives.

There comes a point when the:

A Room of Our Own is a network open to all feminists and womanists. If I wanted it to reflect my personal politics, I would have reblogged posts I agree with on my blog.

statement becomes tedious with repetition. Reblogging would have been cheaper, less time consuming, and result in less abuse and threats of physical violence. Of course, this is never good enough for some people. Building a platform to share the writing of women who self-identify as feminist and womanist was always going to involve complaints. I knew in advance that it would result in being crapped on. I’ve watched enough feminist social media campaigns get trashed to think it wouldn’t happen to me.

Sometimes I just ignore it, but I’m becoming increasingly intolerant of feminist purity politics. For the record,

I am gender critical.

I believe the sex industry constitutes state-sanctioned violence against women.

I think ‘mother privilege’ is a deeply stupid concept lacking any analysis of women as a class and it completely erases the multiple oppressions faced by many women, including racism, lesbophobia, classism (in materialist sense) and disablism.

White woman who say that misogyny is tolerated when racism isn’t are perpetuating white supremacy. Being a feminist doesn’t magically cure you of socialisation within a white supremacist, capitalist-patriarchy. It’s not only possible to be a feminist AND racist, it’s pretty much a given (and, no, I don’t exclude myself from this).

Womanism is the logical consequence of a mainstream feminism which erases the voices of othered women.

Men can’t be feminists.

Feminism is about the liberation of women

If you’ve read my blog, you’re probably familiar with my stance on these issues. Hell, the latter half of the above shouldn’t even need to be said.

What I rarely write about is my loathing of feminist purity politics. No woman is born a perfect feminist and I have no time for anyone who thinks they were born perfect.

I would have ignored the most recent criticism of me as a shit feminist for promoting the writing of feminists/womanists that other feminists hate had it not been for the spate of unnecessary twaddle on Facebook recently. My FB wall is full of posts by women saying “X said this about me” and “Y said that about D” and “you won’t believe what T said about B in group G”.

Frankly, I experienced less ridiculousness in high school – despite being the bullied nerd girl with no real friends for most of it. We absolutely need to be having critical conversations about theory and practise but it doesn’t need sub-tweeting or cryptic posts on FB.

Purity politics only reinforces patriarchal silencing of women. A feminism that involves women too afraid to speak out for fear of being trashed for not being “good enough” isn’t a feminism I want to be part of. No woman is owed an answer to a question they ask other feminists. No woman should be shamed for making compromises in their feminism in order to survive in a white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.

If you don’t like the way one woman is engaged in feminist activism, then do it yourself. Complaining that other women are doing it “wrong” is intellectually lazy.

I have lots of friends on FB who cover the whole gamut of feminism. I’ve never felt the urge to post on someone’s wall “YOU’RE WRONG” despite disagreeing with them completely. Because it’s bloody rude. It’s quite possible to have critical discussions about feminist theory without subtweeting and cryptic FB posts. It’s possible to have these discussions without resorting to personal insults and snide remarks. It’s possible to hold disagreements without dragging other people into it. Screen-capping posts from one FB group to another is inherently anti-feminist and violates all the rules about safe spaces.

All women are living with the trauma of male supremacy and we will all replicate the same heteronormative, white supremacist patriarchal structures because socialisation is incredibly powerful. A little bit of recognition and some basic kindness to other women wouldn’t go amiss.

I know this post will loose me friends, but I wouldn’t tolerate this behaviour from my children. I’m certainly not going to accept it from adults.